Thursday, 25 December 2008

Honor your words, elections approaching

As usual, Iraqi oil sources in Baghdad whispered to Ruba Husari of the International Oil Daily and told her about the final list of Iraq's second postwar bid round for oil and gas field development with 14 oil fields and two gas fields, one week before the official annoucement due to be made by Iraq's Oil Minister, Hussein al-Shahristani.

Husari made a gesture why al-Shahristani insisted to launch the new bidding round before the first one, which was announced last June for eight oil and gas fields, has been concluded or has made significant progress.

"Al-Shahristani, who was elected to the Iraqi parliament in 2005 before joining the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, wants to build a list of personal achievments as he eyes the next elections, slated for early 2010," Husari said.

"During discussions Wednesday at the ministry headquarters, oil officials from the licensing and contracting department acquiesced to al-Shahristani's pressure to announce a new offering of oil and gas fields to international oil companies before the end of the year as he had promised on several occassions," she added.

“We called it our Berlin Wall,” said Saad Khalef, 41, told The NYT on March 6 story as he surveyed the newly uncovered ground where the walls had stood, as crushed and pale as the skin beneath a bandage. “Now we can breathe easy. Yesterday, I felt a breeze coming through, I swear to God.”The NYT's Anthony Shadid in a piece on Jan. 6, 2011 two days after Muqtada Al-Sadr's return from nearly four-year self-imposed exile in Iraq: In 2004, an American spokesman in Baghdad called Mr. Sadr “a two-bit thug.” On Wednesday, the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, called him “the leader of an Iraqi political party that won a number of seats in the March 2010 election.”